Apocalypse Lullaby
by Beanpot
Summary: Written for the prompt: Cam wonders or tries to find out how his parents are faring after the end of the world. Sam/Cam


**Apocalypse Lullaby**

"Tell me another story", she asked, her back pressed to his front as the night wind brushed gently over them. It was one of those perfect nights that couldn't happen anymore - with crisp air, soft wind, and a moon you could see. Sam felt him shift, always restless, his mind never calm and she needed him to be calm, centered. When he finally spoke, his voice was still harsh from the smoke they had inhaled for weeks, the wet clothes doing nothing to protect their vocal cords.

"When I was 8, I decided to go and hunt for the mysterious white doe the men had seen off in the woods. I reckoned I'd be a hero and maybe get a seat at the big kids' table for Thanksgiving that year. So I woke up early, snuck a few biscuits out of the basket, and took off for the woods. Didn't take too long for me to get lost. Must have spent a good 6 hours wandering around, trying to find my way back home. Just when I thought I was going to die out there, my granddaddy came around the corner. Turns out he was there to check on the moonshine and I was on the edge of their property and it was only lunch time. He kept it a secret that I'd been crying…"

Cam's voice was a lullaby to them both as they drifted off to sleep under a moon made blood red by the reflections of the never-ending fires.

***********************************************

Sam unhooked the trailer from her bike before hefting the bike onto her shoulder as she waded through the stream. It was early fall and the water was still warm from the sun. She leaned it against the stump of a burned tree and went back to help Cam carry their bike trailers over the stream. The remnants of the bridge they had needed to cross lay around them, gothic stones in haphazard piles.

They sat on the banks, letting the water filter through charcoal, and ate some of the apples they'd found down the way. Out of the corner of her eye, Sam could see him slip into that mental place he spent most of his waking and sleeping hours. She tossed the apple core into the woods and his eyes didn't follow its path, which frightened her a bit.

Sam sighed inwardly. She needed Cam here with her, because it wasn't over yet and she could only be aware of so much. It'd been days since they'd seen anyone or any of Them, but she knew they couldn't relax. The smoke was still thick here, the air was still rich with decay which meant nothing good. At least when they'd left Colorado, the air had finally calmed to a point they could inhale deeply and not cough up bits of mucus.

She stood up and pulled the crumpled atlas out of his trailer. Cam took no notice of her as she sat next to him, leg pressing against leg. She unfolded the map so it draped across both their laps and pointed to a place somewhere near the Kansas/Missouri border.

They were avoiding the remnants of the highway system, but the backroads were in a similar state. The atlas had stopped being a map and become simply a guide back when they hit Kansas. They were operating under best guesses, intuition, and the notion that you can always go home again.

"I think we're here", she said. He gave a cursory glance before nodding in agreement and going back to staring at the light dancing off the water. Sam folded up the map and suppressed the urge to smack him with it. She understood; she really did, which was why she had agreed to this excursion into nothingness. After stuffing the map back into his trailer she went to kneel in front of him. "Are you sure they aren't in Kansas?"

"No. They would've gone home at the first sign of trouble. I told them to go home." His response was firm and yet she could sense the moment of hesitation and doubt. She placed her hands on his knees and leaned inward to rest her forehead on his. With her thumbs rubbing circles into his thighs, she took a few deep, slow breathes until she could sense his breathing match hers. They stayed that way until her thighs cramped in protest.

She pushed back and stood up. "Okay, we made a decent amount of miles, I think we should stay here tonight."

"No", said Cam. "We need to keep going."

That night, his fingers brushing against her inner thighs, his face buried into her neck, she didn't need to ask for a story.

************************************************

The rain was heavy and smelled of nothing clean. It was something she'd never accept – rain smelling of death. Her hair was plastered to her neck and she gritted her teeth as she pushed the bike up the hill. To her left, Cam was struggling as well.

From the top, they could see what use to be a small town and through the haze there was the gleam of light from a window. They exchanged a glance and gingerly made their way down the slick road. It was a chance, but they knocked on the door of the home.

An older woman peered through the door, "Can I help you?"

"I'm Colonel Samantha Carter and this Colonel Cameron Mitchell with the US Air Force. Do you know of a place we can bunk through the night?" questioned Sam. No one was comfortable around strangers anymore, but using their ranks seemed to make people trust them a bit more.

It worked again as the door opened and the woman gestured for them to leave their bikes and trailers under the sagging porch roof. Inside, the room was stuffy from the presence of many bodies and the smell of stone soup. A dozen pair of eyes fixed on Sam and Cam and the woman who let them in spoke up, "They're Air Force Officers, maybe they know something."

Sam felt Cam stiffen next to them. There was no way to tell these people they didn't know anything and how she liked not knowing after having known too much. A man of about 20 stood up to make to room for them around the stove and slightly begged, "We're going to win this one, right?"

"Sure", lied Cam. "We will."

They ate from the pot after adding some of the wild onions in their bags. Most of the questions were directed towards Cam, whose face was still red and tight from the fireless heat that had claimed the Mountain. Sam watched as his shoulders drew closer to his ears and his hand kept drifting towards his hips in a fruitless effort to calm the throbbing pin holding them together.

That night, under a roof for the first time in weeks, she rolled to face him and said, "Tell me about the time Granma caught Andrew smoking pot. I think that's one of my favorites."

He smiled, his face slightly tearing from the effort. "God, my brother was stupid for thinking he could do that in the tobacco barn and no one finding out. He said Granma just stared at him and then handed him a rake. Said no one was allowed to smoke stuff they didn't grow themselves in these neck of the woods. So if he was going to visit Lucifer, he was going to do it dead tired from work. She then dragged his hide to a patch of farm land and said she'd get some seeds from a friend – and who knew my grandmother knew where to get pot – and he could feel free to grow some here. But he couldn't sell it or tell anyone. Andrew never touched the stuff again and my parents never knew the story."

"So what happened with the stuff he planted?" she asked, her voice soft so not to wake anyone else.

"Lord if I know. Probably made brownies for her ladies; they always were a wild bunch," he chuckled at the image of the ladies circle dizzy from special brownies.

"I've only met Miss Lorraine. I've heard stories about Miss Cindy though – heard she caused quite a scandal with a torrid affair with a Frenchman", she murmured, her hand finding its way to his lower back. Through her hand, Sam could feel the tension easing a bit from his muscles.

"Good lord, that made the town talk for years. But the way it was told to me, it didn't end well and Miss Cindy spent a year traveling the country. Dad always reckoned that there was a child somewhere, but no one ever asked. But at one point, she was asked to sit in the back of the church, which made Granma and Miss Lorraine see purple. So they quit the choir and sat next to their friend for a solid year in protest. Dad said once they brought in their knitting and made a scarlet A that they insisted was A for the angels. Think Momma was given it when Andrew was born – cracked them all up."

Cam paused in the telling of the story and shifted his weight. He rolled over onto his stomach before concluding the story with, "You couldn't ask for a better group of people to watch your six."

The tension crept back into his muscles and Sam knew neither would sleep that night.

*****************************************************

The view from the Appalachians was still stunning, if for a different reason now. They split one of the sandwiches given to them by the old man who had flown with the Tuskegee Airmen. Her leg had been hurting her to the point that pedaling was impossible, so they parked their bikes for a few days and helped him and the other remaining people fix up the town church. There was a doctor in town – a vet actually, but still the first they'd seen in months – who removed the stitches from her calf while tsk-ing her for using it as much as she had. Sam just shrugged and asked for stronger pain meds so they could move on towards home.

Sam swallowed one of the pills given to her and popped the last piece of jam covered bread into her mouth. Cam was spread eagle in the grass, half asleep from the heat of the sun. The moment was almost idyllic so she was surprised when he said, "Why don't you tell me a story this time."

"I don't have any good ones."

"Don't care. But I know what you're doing."

"Don't care", she replied back. "Yours are better. So tell."

"Granma ever tell you of the time I had a teenage hissy fit and mom and dad left me at her house for a summer to shapen me up? I learned how to make jam and to knit that summer. Mom swore she was ready to leave me there until I died, but dad says she missed me something fierce even though I'd be a jerk to them both."

*******************************************

"…and then when she found out about online Scrabble, she was off. I swear she was scamming people out of money on those sites. People thought she was just this little old lady, but that woman could make people cry at the Scrabble table. She and mom use to play that and cribbage for hours when the lights would go out from thunderstorms."

********************************************

"My dad hates brussels sprouts, so mom use to make them every damn time she was pissed at him. Once he saw them on his plate, he knew damn well that he'd better eat every last one or be sleeping on the sofa for another week."

********************************************

"I think of all the people I've brought home, you're their favorite. They've adored you from the moment you spun into that dirt driveway quicker than anyone and left a cloud of dust behind when you left. I'm sure they'll love to see you when we get there. Dad was so proud when he found out you made full bird."

"You know I love your family, Cam."

"Even me?"

"Ask me again tomorrow."

**********************************************

Their pace picked up when they hit Johnsonville, the town before home. It was like all the others they had seen – sort of there, sort of gone, maybe a few people. She looked at Cam and saw the flesh around his scars go white. He'd been hoping that maybe this part of the world, tucked up into the mountains, would've escaped. No one had ever bothered with them before. The railroads mainly ignored them, cable companies refused to run lines, and politicians rarely came to kiss babies.

Sam had held the same wish, but knew that it was probably a false hope. Yet she still felt a tightening in her chest as their bikes finally swung through town. She'd only visited here a few times, mainly for holidays, so she followed behind Cam as he swung past what had been the library (the roof was gone and part of a wall), the West Baptist Church (too New Age for Granma so she kept to the East Baptist Church), and past the deserted Firehall where the Unitarians held their services (it was where Cam's mom would go just to be ornery).

They didn't see a soul.

Her eyes began to fill with tears as they turned down the long driveway. She could hear Cam whispering to himself, "They will be here. They will be here. They will all be here".

Everything seemed calm, placid, like the façade of a Christmas window. Cam dropped his bike and ran up the stairs, yelling, "Mom? Dad? Andrew? Grandma?"

His hand reached for the door, and back by the tobacco barn, Sam could see a white sheet fluttering in the breeze.


End file.
